So I’m sitting here listening to “Don’t Cry Out” by Shiny Toy Guns and it makes me want to buy. I discovered it via Grooveshark’s Billboard of the top songs across their network — and now I just bought with one click.
Now I’m checking out “Forest” by System of a Down and it reminded me I need to add a few SOAD songs to my collection. I was reminded of SOAD by Grooveshark’s Recommendation engine — and now I just bought with another click.
When I buy these or others, the copyright holders get their cut, the Grooveshark member that contributed the song gets a cut, I pay for a song I like legally and Grooveshark gets their cut and some happy members. I love crowdsourced capitalism done right, everybody wins.
I’ve been lucky enough to watch Grooveshark grow from a logo on a napkin (maybe it was an idea, but the smooth logo wasn’t far behind). Sam, Josh, and Andres have grown a smart, talented team and a small army of developers — in Gainesville’s tech scene, Grooveshark exhibits many signs of a cult, in a good way.
I’ve seen part of this movie before — when Shawn Fanning was programming/sleeping/programming in his uncle’s office, Sean Parker was hustling money to pay for a second server and a smooth cat wearing headphones became the logo of the Napster revolution and RIAA enemy #1. My fund’s investment paid for that second server. What happened from there disrupted an industry in the truest sense of the word, and the walls keep coming down.
That leads us to Grooveshark, the truest implementation so far of Napster’s potential to leverage P2P and benefit all participants — including copyright holders, consumer distributors and music lovers. There are plenty of hurdles ahead but the team is doing a lot of things right. They’ve gotten great underground coverage and just got a short/sweet TechCrunch review (at least my rare beta invite to Arrington wasn’t wasted).
There remains an argument whether music will ultimately be free. I don’t know that answer, but I hope not. I’m a strong believer in personal/intellectual property rights (e.g. the right to expect payment for something I create) and the trend I see toward expecting free worries me. Regardless of how that plays out, Grooveshark is well positioned as a blend of Napster (the original), Wikipedia, Facebook and iTunes. Kudos guys, for a good launch so far. I look forward to the day when every song on the planet, including hits, long-tail, remixes, concert recordings, indies and mashups, is available via Grooveshark and everybody gets paid…
Related images: grooveshark, grooveshark logo, sam tarantino, josh greenberg, andres barreto, napster, napster logo, shawn fanning, sean parker
